Some of the biggest tech companies in the world displayed ads on a website featuring images of child abuse, inadvertently helping to fund its operations. This situation highlights the troubling aspects of digital advertising.
Sometimes, you encounter an image online that's so disturbing you can't forget it. For Krzysztof Franaszek, this happened at work.
Franaszek runs the advertising research firm Adalytics in the US. Recently, he was investigating where ads for the US Department of Homeland Security appear online, which led him to an image-sharing website called ImgBB. There, Franaszek discovered something disturbing: sexually explicit images of a very young child, with ads from Fortune 500 companies displayed alongside them.
He immediately reported the content to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and child safety organizations. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection, one of the groups Franaszek alerted, found at least 35 images flagged by Adalytics on the site that fit its classification of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The Centre notified ImgBB, and the images were removed. An FBI spokesperson stated that the bureau reviews all allegations of criminal conduct but does not comment on tips from the public. The DHS did not respond to inquiries.
The more Franaszek investigated, the clearer the problem became. His findings raise questions about how the ads you see online might unintentionally funnel large amounts of money into undesirable and sometimes illegal areas of the internet.
According to a new report from Adalytics, advertising systems run by companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have unintentionally sent money to the owners of a website hosting illegal images of child sexual abuse. Besides CSAM, Adalytics found ads from over 70 large organizations and Fortune 500 companies appearing next to hardcore adult content, including MasterCard, Nestlé, Starbucks, Unilever, and even the US Government. "Many advertisers whose ads appeared on this website probably had no idea they were funding this kind of content," Franaszek says. On February 7, 2025, US Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal sent letters to Amazon, Google, and other ad tech companies mentioned in the report, asking if this issue is widespread across the internet. "The spread of [child sexual abuse material] is a terrible crime that causes lasting harm to its victims," the letter to Google states. "When digital advertiser networks like Google place ads on websites known to host such activity, they effectively create a funding stream that supports criminal operations and causes lasting harm to our children."